There's an option you type in at the boot prompt to have Puppy ignore (not load) the last n saved sessions. I haven't used it in so long I forgot what it is, but I think the examples given at the boot prompt make it clear. Something like puppy noload=n.

If you want to hide the most current save, when rebooting type
puppy pfix=1
For the previous 2 saves, when rebooting type
puppy pfix=2
And so on....

To skip all previous saves, when rebooting type
puppy pfix=ram

At the time you are rebooting your PC you should see the initial Puppy message, if you hit the F2 or F3 key, you will get a hint at what this does.

Hope this helps
P.S. I have NOT found any explanation anywhere explaining if one can selectively choose a particular one to NOT boot. For example if I have 2 save sessions and I want to use the 2nd, but I do not want to use the 1st, I have not seen how to accomplish this anywhere._________________Get ACTIVE Create Circles; Do those good things which benefit people's needs!
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Thanks for the help guys.More than enough to experiment with.
I know I accomplished this when I first started using Puppy on 42.I found instructions somewhere and it worked.

gcmartin
I think I read a report in the Lucid 525 thread that you had experienced problems of some kind saving to a multisession disc?I reported at the time that everything was fine for me.However,after making a few saves it all started going pear shaped,ie things missing and at bootup I was seeing the first boot screen country settings etc....all over again.
The advice was ,to rename any other 525 sfs's on the hdd which I did but still the same problem.
I then made a remastered version of 525 and used that on a multisession disc and so far no problems to report at all, though I have to make further saves before I can be absolutely certain.
Find this most odd and any advice as to why this is occurring would be appreciated.
I guess I should really be mentioning this on the Lucid 525 thread.

IIRC, there is a way to specify which session(s) not to use. At least there used to be. I remember playing around with a file or folder somewhere in Puppy where I could change something and that would control which sessions my multisession Puppy loaded at boot.

... gcmartin
I think I read a report in the Lucid 525 thread that you had experienced problems of some kind saving to a multisession disc ... I guess I should really be mentioning this on the Lucid 525 thread.

Thanks Brown Mouse.

What I have tried to accurately report is that after Puppy saves the session to the bootable LiveCD, it is NO LONGER bootable. And no systems recognizes the media as a bootable media.

If I review the CD from a running system, all the necessary files are still resident on the CD along with the latest Save-session folder. But, the ability for the media to be used as a bootable media is destroyed even though files are present. And, the original dates on the CD's files are still there when I compare them to the ISO.

If someone who knows about bootable CD files and placements on a CD wants to have a look, I can place a dd of the LIveCD media for them to review. Thus, there is evidence that should help understand what the running Puppy is doing at Shutdown save-session to destroy the ability for the media to be used again.

Anyone want to review this? (Further, I cannot believe that having the same problem using Wary and Puppy ISOs, to create to Live media and have this same problem on 5 different PCs with CD/DVD writable devices, I cannot be the only one in PUppyland where this is occurring.

Is this clear. If there is any information that I can provide which would help Puppy Distro owners for WARY or PUPPY base to resolve this, let me know how I can help.
Thanks in advance._________________Get ACTIVE Create Circles; Do those good things which benefit people's needs!
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[/quote]
What I have tried to accurately report is that after Puppy saves the session to the bootable LiveCD, it is NO LONGER bootable. And no systems recognizes the media as a bootable media.

If I review the CD from a running system, all the necessary files are still resident on the CD along with the latest Save-session folder. But, the ability for the media to be used as a bootable media is destroyed even though files are present. And, the original dates on the CD's files are still there when I compare them to the ISO.
[/quote]

Hi gcmartin

Very interesting that one.I've not seen this happen yet.
I'm using DVD-RW media myself.Out of curiosity,have you tried this ?

Hi gcmartin, I have been using puppys on livecd since version 2.14 or thereabouts, I have used multisession CDs all the time and only a few times DVDs, since my old machines often did not have a DVD player. I have never had the problems you describe. I have very often had another related problem, latest with sqzd_4.99.2. When I use the 'puppy pfix=1' method to hide the last save when booting, my puppy go into 'kernel panic'. Accusing me of 'Attempting to kill init' is the poor dying live CD's last words before the PC freezes! The PC has to be physically turned off, nothing works, only two blinking leds in Caps lock and Scroll lock on the keyboard, and the fan in the power supply, indicate some life. But when power is on again, the puppy wakes to a new life and will boot as normal.

Historically, multisession Puppy has not always worked perfectly from a CD (as opposed to a DVD) or in laptops.

I have no idea why laptops have problems with multisession. Apparently, laptop CD and DVD drives aren't made to the same standards as the ones used in real computers.

Multisession capability was added to the CD specification long after CDs first came out, so its implementation is a bit quirky. Each drive manufacturer seems to do it differently, and really old CD drives can't do multisession at all.

Multisession was included in the original DVD specification, and DVD drive manufacturers all seem to have agreed on how to implement multisession.

Is it the 'badfolders' file down on /, Flash? Conceivably you might try to edit this manually (for out-of-sight passby on boot, forensic looking and so on). All that would be needed is (besides a sample from an old disc where it was done in situ for reference) the date-time string and to save your current session - just remember that once writ, it's *there* unless you kill that current layer-dir uswusf .. or remaster, usually. The bad about doing this selectively is you may cut a mountain out from under a peak or some other unforeseen adventure ^.^

@tallboy ..Oh yeah, that evil red RAMFULL towards the end of bootext?
Sometimes I'd get enthused and punch in a dotpet that expanded way far too much (a cursor thingie the last time) and sh-booom down she went. No bootie no mooor, so no way to mark-as-bad - dunno, I usually move on . . .

Will also happen with adding monster sfses. Puppy will tend to disregard the 'do not load into ram' code too if you try that at boot but sometimes will pick up swap if you got it. hwr specs have some effect but tough to custom the initrd if you're so inclined (a few puplets come with).

@end-of-session..
If the dog is a good dog it'll tell you 'Time to Migrate!' and do it on a blank disc (hard to backspace navigate on those sequences so you can burniso2cd an upgrade or prepped disc). My old w020 is a good dog this just happened on a few days ago. It's also a clue to remaster if you have ideas about cleaning up 'seemed like a good idea at the time' things .. don't blank the old disc (if -rw) until you shakedown the new and make sure it's all there in good working order.

greets all fellow disc-0s - i <3 optical media...

Follow-up to Flash's question under - That's the one, it may be called .badfolders and it's a simple text file with date-time(s) to match the marked-as-bad savedirs so it can be read at (next) boot and the 'bad' savedir(s) cut out of the layering.Edited_time_total

I assume you mean, is that where Puppy stores the sessions to skip when it boots? I'm not sure. My Puppy doesn't have that file, but maybe it's only created when you boot with the puppy pfix=n option. I do remember seeing a file or folder (seems to me it was a folder) where I could put the sessions I didn't want Puppy to boot, but it's been years. The reason I remember it is, I could put other sessions in it than the latest one.

I do remember seeing a file or folder (seems to me it was a folder) where I could put the sessions I didn't want Puppy to boot, but it's been years.

You mean /archive? Anything put in /archive will be saved, but not loaded at bootup. If there is no /archive, you can just make one. The problem is, that when you 'save', you may save a lot of unwanted stuff as well. I haven't used /archive for a long time, but I think it makes a new dated /archive each time, so you can go back and load some old stuff.